


Echoes

by atamascolily



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:55:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28225734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atamascolily/pseuds/atamascolily
Summary: Deep in the caverns of Belsavis, Mara Jade comes face to face with a truth she doesn't want to admit.(AKA a missing scene fromChildren of the Jediby Barbara Hambly.)
Relationships: Callista Ming/Luke Skywalker, Mara Jade/Luke Skywalker
Comments: 5
Kudos: 22





	Echoes

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, hey, hey, guess who was reading _Children of the Jedi_ and having FEELINGS again??

Mara Jade spent most of her time on Belsavis leading a search party to retrieve the crazed smugglers whose minds had been damaged by Roganda Ismaren's failed plot. It was a grim and unpleasant job, made worse by the fact that most of the victims were beings she knew--now reduced to ravening shells of their former vibrant and profane selves.

Each unwelcome discovery of another old friend, twisted almost beyond recognition by the drugs, re-kindled her rage. Still, Mara did her best to keep her fury leveled to a cold, sharp edge as she threw herself into the work of subduing the last remaining stragglers and dragging them up to the surface. 

The only good news was that healers from Ithor were scheduled to arrive at any moment with a cure. Rest and healing wouldn't restore the years that had been taken from Ismaren's victims, but at least grant them their freedom at last. As much as Mara would have preferred to see Ismaren strung up and brought to justice--or personally issued the killing blow--it wasn't possible. The _other_ ex-Emperor's hand had managed to escape in a stolen Tikiar just as Mara had arrived in-system, and there was no way to know where she had gone to ground.

The whole business left a sour tase in Mara's mouth. It was bad enough that Ismaren's bid for power had nearly succeeded, that the woman and her son had escaped. But the revelation that Ismaren had been an Emperor's hand was a stab in the heart, a betrayal from beyond the grave by the man Mara had worshiped for decades who hadn't given a damn about her. Everything Mara had ever known--everything she had ever believed about herself for her entire life had now been called into question, turned upside down yet again.

At least this time it wasn't Skywalker's fault. Not directly, at least.

Luke Skywalker was floating in a bacta tank in the Brathfen Corporation's medcenter, having gotten himself caught up in the rogue warship Ismaren's bastard son had summoned from its hiding place in deep space. He needed it; Mara herself had though him dead when she'd extricated him from his escape pod after the explosion of said warship. He claimed it the Force had saved him, but Force or not, he was lucky to be alive, given his injuries. 

This being Skywalker, of course, that wasn't the end of the drama. A few minutes later, Mara had picked up a second escape pod--its sole occupant one of Skywalker's missing Jedi students, Cray Mingla. A woman who Skywalker now insisted was the spirit of a Jedi knight from the Old Republic, and not Cray Mingla at all.

At first, Mara had taken Skywalker's ravings as a bad joke in extremely poor taste. Her second thought was that he must be hallucinating due to the volume of pain meds she'd doped him with to keep him upright.

But Organa Solo nodded in acceptance as her brother and his student embraced. The other woman actually _believed_ this pile of bantha shit, Mara thought in growing disbelief. Organa Solo might be willfully naive when she wanted to be, but she wasn't a fool--and that in itself made Mara sit up and pay more attention to Skywalker's outrageous claims.

Pretending your most attractive female student was possessed by a ghost was certainly a creative way to cover up an affair, but it wasn't like Skywalker to lie so brazenly. He might be an overconfident fool, but he was too earnest and eager to take refuge in a lie or bend the truth even when it would serve him. He truly believed what he was saying.

Mara had only met Cray Mingla once in passing at a cocktail party on Coruscant. Even so, she had to admit this new Cray didn't carry herself like the woman Mara remembered from that brief exchange. People changed, of course, but their tells--the little physical tics that everyone had, whether they realized them or not--rarely did. Which, combined with all the other evidence, meant--

Slowly, reluctantly, Mara had been forced to accept that Organa Solo was right and Skywalker's crazy story was true after all.

What the hell. Skywalker drew all brands of bizarre and crazy into his orbit--trouble flocked to him like a gang of mynocks to a sparking power cable. It was why Mara left his academy on Yavin (one reason, anyway), abandoning her training for the challenges of leading the Smuggler's Alliance Karrde had all but dropped in her lap. All she'd ever wanted in life was stability and security, and there was none of that to be had around Luke Skywalker these days.

The last of Roganda Ismaren's victims was dragged away with chains and restraints to the secure medical wing Brathflen had reserved for them. With their task complete, the search party disbanded. The secret corridors beneath the village of Plawal stood empty and silent, illuminated only by the phosphorescent light from Mara's glowlamp.

She was tired and sweaty and eager to retreat back to the _Hunter's Luck_ for a long spell in the 'fresher, to wash her hands of this whole business and never look back. Still, she hesitated, struck by some unfathomable impulse to linger a few moments longer.

In the distance, a cry echo through the corridors, an unmistakable sob of deep, abiding grief. Mara frowned. She and her team had checked these passageways thoroughly. There shouldn't be anyone else down here.

Could it be a ghost, then? One of the lost children of the Jedi who had sheltered here during Palpatine's purge, haunting this place? Organa Solo had mentioned something about a nursery down here, after all.

Curious in spite of herself, Mara follows the faint sounds as best she could, until she reached the nursery. She'd passed by it multiple times already, but had been so caught up in the search for Ismaren's victims that it hadn't really registered until now.

The room was large and expansive, littered with toys of all shapes and descriptions--only a handful of which she recognized. The wall to her right was filled with an enormous whirligig that whistled and spun, each part rotating in different directions. Gleaming metal rings and globes were attached to the wall on her left, and wooden blocks and padded pillars lay scattered haphazardly about, as if the children would return at any moment and rejoin their games.

The atmosphere here was noticeably lighter, almost effervescent, compared to the rest of the caverns, as if the children's delight in their playroom had seeped into the walls. If Mara closed her eyes, she could imagine she heard the laughter and the teasing, the joyful shouts. and yes, occasionally tears--though nothing like the soul-crushing grief that had drawn her here.

Mara paused by a large glass sphere filled with pink-gold liquid, and idly traced her hand across its surface. Nothing happened, and she frowned and concentrated harder as she reached out with the Force. She was rewarded for her efforts when the liquid jumped in defiance of gravity to follow her fingers, separating out into two different colors with the faintest hint of blue between them.

 _Huh_ , she thought, amused in spite of herself. _How about that._

Mara had no memories of ordinary childhood play--only the far more grown-up training she'd undergone with private tutors, where every mistake meant deathly serious consequences. The leisure and respite that these Jedi children had enjoyed was almost frivolous in comparison, and yet Mara couldn't help but wonder if she, too, might have been so innocent. What her life might look like with Palpatine's manipulations at every turn.

Tucked away in the corner along the back wall was a flat rectangular tank filled with yellow sand. Mara only recognized it because Organa Solo had described it to her in passing: a seeing tank, in which fledgling Force users shaped the sand with their thoughts.

On a whim, Mara bent down and placed her hand above the sand. _Flowers or animals work best_ , Organa Solo had said. _Something you can easily picture in your mind--_

Mara recalled a recent dinner party held in a private botanical garden on Coruscant - the sweeping curves and delicate folds of the scented night-blooming ghost orchids that opened with the sunset, filling the air with their thick and heavy perfume. She opened her eyes to find the barest crude caricature projecting out of the sand and sighed in disappointment.

No doubt, Skywalker would be disappointed to know she'd failed such an easy task. Just as well he would never find out about this--

Unbidden, Luke Skywalker's bruised and battered face popped into her mind, right at the moment he bent to kiss Cray-Callista as if he wasn't half dead himself. As if the two of them were the only people in the world, and his sister and his brother-in-law and Mara herself meant absolutely nothing to him.

 _Stop it,_ Mara told herself fiercely--only to give a violent start as she glanced down at the tank.

Below her hand, sketched out in perfect detail, was Skywalker's face, just as Mara had envisioned him. Beside him, rising out of the sand like a ghost, was Callista herself, turning to meet his embrace, as if Mara was reliving the memory all over again--

" _No_ ," Mara spat. The image in the tank collapsed and dissolved as her concentration shattered, vanishing so abruptly she could have imagined the entire thing--and just as certain she hadn't. 

She stared at the smooth sand for several minutes, breathing hard as she tried to calm herself. Nothing happened.

"No," she repeated. "It was a just a trick. Just a stupid toy. It doesn't actually mean anything."

She turned and stalked from the room, as if her denial could erase what had just happened as quickly as the sand had swallowed Skywalker's face.

It didn't matter what Luke Skywalker did or didn't do with Callista or Cray or whoever the hell she was. The sooner Mara could get off Belsavis and wash her hands of the whole business, the better.

As she stepped back out into the corridor, there was another cry in the distance, somewhere ahead of her in the caverns. This time, Mara pushed on and ignored it, re-tracing her steps back to the surface. No doubt it was just her imagination getting the better of her.

Even if it wasn't, Mara had no intentions of disturbing any more ghosts.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, that's Callista sobbing in the caverns as she grieves for her lost powers. I love the image of the two of them wandering through the underground passageways, able to hear each other, but never actually coming in contact. Somehow, that sums up their entire relationship for me - perpetually missed connections.


End file.
